coach Joe Susan notes the team GPA during the fall semester was 3.09 — “good,”
he says, “but not good enough.” (His goal was 3. 1.)

No question, striving for victory on the playing field while upholding Bucknell’s
high academic standards does make a coach’s job harder.

“We have had coaches … who have opted to go elsewhere,” says Hardt. “Butthat’s a fit issue,” not a systemic problem. “It’s been very rare here.”And some parts of the Bucknell experience make things easier for coaches asthey compete for student-athletes. Compared to big sports schools, Bucknell’ssmall classes are a draw. “You’re a name, not a number,” says Grieb. Also, shesays coaches regularly mention Bucknell’s great record of job placement forgraduates. “Parents love that.”

FACULTY ARE HAPPY TO HELP

Going into his final semester this spring, soccer star Chris Thorsheim aimedto finish his Bucknell degree while training with the New York Red Bullssoccer team. Doing so means taking two independent-study courses andtwo courses online. “It’s definitely going to be a juggling act,” he says, but“professors seem like they’re going to help me along the way.”Academic All-American Mike Muscala did similar juggling as he spent hislast semester preparing for the NBA draft in 2013.

“It was pretty tough,” he says, but “professors were really helpful in my being
able to chase my dreams while still upholding high academic standards.”

In the mid 1980s, Ivy League schools
were looking to add nonconference
football games against opponents that
would offer reasonably competitive
contests. Schools such as Bucknell,
Lehigh, Lafayette, Holy Cross and
Colgate — geographically close, with
high academic standards and sharing
the Ivy policy of no athletic scholarships — seemed like a good fit. With
Ivy games as a building block, Bucknell
and five other schools formed a new
football conference in 1986 — the
Colonial League.

Five years later, with the football
competition working well, the Colonial
schools expanded to more sports and
chose the name The Patriot League.

Bucknell’s then-president Gary Sojka
was a key force in launching this
new Division I conference, founded
upon the scholar-athlete model of
college sports.

Noted sports journalist JohnFeinstein lauded the Patriot League’sstudent-centered approach to collegesports in his 2000 book The LastAmateurs, which followed the league’smen’s basketball teams for a fullseason.

Bucknell and the other schools,Feinstein wrote, “refused to sell theirsouls in the name of winning gamesand cashing in on the athletes theyrecruit.” They “simply won’t give in tothe temptation to take gifted athleteswho are poor students.”And yet, one pillar of that commit-ment to the scholar-athlete model— no athletic scholarships — was aflashpoint from day one.

William & Mary opted out of
plans to join the still-forming football
conference over the no-scholarship
policy, according to Bucknell Director
of Athletics and Recreation John
Hardt. Eventually, founding member
Davidson College dropped out of
the league.

As the cost of higher education
escalated, the remaining Patriot League
schools found it harder to recruit top
athletes whose talents could earn
them free educations elsewhere.

As an engineering student, he had labs
that couldn’t be missed or moved, and he
often had to make up missed practices by
swimming with the women’s team.

“It was always a challenge,” he says. “Youhad to be more regimented in managingyour time.”Gross was one of the early winners of thePatriot League’s annual scholar-athleteaward in his sport. “It felt good to knowBucknell and the league were dedicated toacademics as much as athletics,” he says.

He now works in the Philadelphia suburbs
for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer,
managing its portfolio of vaccines.

“Bucknell did a great job preparing me”
for a professional career, he says.

His Pfizer colleagues include some fellow
alumni. “Everyone remembers it fondly. It’s
a good community that goes on with you for
the rest of your life.” — Matt Zencey